The Beginning of a Journey
by clair beaubien
Summary: Bucky finds Steve. Told from Sam Wilson's POV. Story has become totally AU since Cpt. America:Civil War was released.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: this idea is based on a (probably false) synopsis for CA:CW I found on the internet. So - possible (but not probable) spoilers.

* * *

Two years. Two years we've been chasing shadows, ghosts, and our own tails trying to find this guy, and one night he just up and walks into our safe house like we sent him an engraved invitation and GPS directions.

Walked? No, man, he _materialized_.

Steve and I were at the dining room table, going over a map of known and suspected HYDRA bases across the globe, when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye.

Barnes.

He was standing in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room, in serious need of a haircut and a shave, decked out in his riot gear, bruised and bloody and looking like something had chewed him up and spit him out onto our doorstep.

Steve had his back to the door and Barnes was staring at him. Even when I straightened up, he kept his eyes on Rogers. It wasn't the cold _'you're already dead'_ expression burned into my memory from the helicarrier. He didn't look like he was waiting to flay anybody alive; he looked like he was willing Steve to turn around and see him. I wonder how long he would've stood there if I hadn't tapped Steve's arm and nodded to the scruffy ghost in the doorway.

Steve looked, then stood, slowly, like he might just spook Barnes back into the void.

" _Bucky._ "

"I know where HYDRA is stockpiling vibranium." Barnes said it like he suddenly remembered he had a message to deliver and no other reason for being here.

"Are you all right? What happened to you?"

"They're shipping it to other HYDRA bases, to make weapons."

Yeah, like Steve was going to care about that when the answer to his every prayer and every nightmare was standing eight feet away from him.

"What happened to you?"

"You've got a map? Does it include Soviet Georgia?" Barnes walked to the table and while he pointed to the map, Steve pulled a chair out for him.

"Sit down. You're hurt. Let me have a look... "

"The base is here, near Mtskheta, just north of Tbilisi..."

"You're hurt, let me have a look…"

"I'm fine," Barnes said, never mind the dried blood he was sprinkling all over every time he pointed to another spot on the map. Even his metal hand was dark with blood. "They've built their base underneath the Armaztsikhe fortress, here. They're stockpiling the vibranium and sending it to other bases."

" _Bucky_ \- "

Barnes brought his head up fast, like maybe he had something sharp and nasty to say. But he only stared at Steve a few seconds then went back to the map.

"They have people working inside the Tbilisi airport, here. They take the vibranium out in private planes."

Steve gritted his teeth and stomped out to the kitchen. Barnes watched him go, still with that _'willing you to see me'_ expression, so I took a chance.

"He's been looking for you for two years," I said to him. "And grieving you for seventy. Throw the guy a bone, why don't you?"

He turned his head to glare at me - "One of _yours?_ " - and a shiver ran up my spine that had to be a draft because it was not fear. No sir, not fear. Not. At. All.

Before I lost the staring contest Barnes seemed to be having with me, Steve was back with a bowl of water, a towel over his shoulder and a massive first aid kit under his arm.

"Sit down. Let me look at your wounds."

"I'm fine," Barnes said. Again.

" _You're not fine, so shut up and sit down_." That was an unequivocal order and I tensed for Barnes' reaction, which I expected to be somewhere high on the Lethal Scale.

But he sat. Sort of hard and stiff and ' _happy now?_ ' For a second, though, he closed his eyes, even sighed, like it was a relief.

And Steve looked at him like _'Man, I can't believe you're here and if I can't hug the crap out of you right this minute, I might just be sick.'_

Then Barnes opened his eyes and Steve quick turned to set his supplies down and open the first aid kit.

"Who did this to you?"

Barnes didn't answer and I figured, what did it matter? Whoever did it, they were dead. They had to be. I'd seen this guy in action. They were dead without him even breaking a sweat.

 _"Who?"_ Steve repeated and when he looked up, Barnes looked down. But Steve didn't wait very long for an answer he must've realized wasn't coming. "This'll sting," he said just before starting to take a damp washcloth to the face of the man who was both immoveable object _and_ unstoppable force.

But Barnes took the washcloth from him and washed his own face, fast and harsh and thoughtless. For good measure he used it to scrub his right hand of blood and dirt, then he tossed it back into the bowl of water.

"We need a team, now. HYDRA's sending the next shipment out in ten days. We need to take them out."

"We'll have a team tonight," Steve said, and he rinsed the washcloth out in the bowl. "First, we need to get you taken care of. You need food and a shower and some rest."

"I need to destroy HYDRA."

"And we will. I need to take care of you."

"You _don't_ need to take care of me," Barnes argued back, but he hadn't even finished his complaint when Steve took his left hand, Barnes' metal hand, into his own. He pulled off the sniper glove off of it and washed the metal just as gentle and as thoroughly as if it'd been a flesh and bloodied hand.

"That's not - that's not -" Barnes said, but he didn't pull away. He stared at what Steve was doing like the answers to all of _his_ prayers and all of _his_ nightmares were in the gesture of Steve washing his hand. He seemed a little wide-eyed when he looked up at Steve.

"Why did you do that?"

"Do what?"

Barnes gestured with his metal hand like he couldn't say the words.

"I told you - I'm taking care of you," Steve said. "All right. Sam'll get supper started while I bandage you up, then we'll talk about getting a team together to go after that vibranium. All right?"

It took a few seconds of Barnes staring at his metal hand, looking like he'd never seen thing before, then he nodded.

"Yeah. All right. Yeah."

##

"Sometimes, reaching out and taking someone's hand is the beginning of a journey. At other times, it is allowing another to take yours." ― Vera Nazarian, _The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration_

* * *

A/N 2: Tbilisi, Georgia (near Russia) has had disastrous flooding recently. Their zoo was severely damaged and many of the animals escaped. One person was apparently killed by an escaped lion. So - thoughts and prayers for the country, the city, the people and the animals, and anyone anywhere in the world in similar situations.

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	2. Chapter 2

Why did I get to be on 'supper' duty? I don't cook any better than anybody else.

All right, yeah, I knew why. Because Barnes was here and Steve was going to stick like glue. Anyway, if Steve made dinner, I might have to be in the dining room with Barnes and yeah, no.

So, supper duty it was.

I knew what Steve liked to eat - lots of protein - I wondered if our guest-slash-IED liked the same thing. Looking at him, it didn't look like he'd gotten a lot of anything to eat anytime lately, so maybe he wouldn't be too particular. And I did _not_ want to see him being particular.

Steve was digging through the first aid kit and Barnes was still giving him the _'please see me'_ look. Which - considering Steve's laser focus on him anyway - was strange.

"What are you looking for?" I asked.

"Scissors. I need scissors for the gauze. What kind of first aid kit doesn't have scissors?"

"The kind where everybody in the room is already carrying something sharp, maybe?" I offered. That made Steve scowl, but it didn't seem to make any impression on Barnes. "You know, you bandage him up now and you're just gonna have to bandage him again after he has a shower."

Steve shook his head and kept looking through the first aid kit. Barnes looked at me but I couldn't tell if he agreed with me or wanted to kill me. "Dinner'll be cooking that long," I tried again with Steve. "Better to have the bandages put on only once."

"We have waterproof tape."

Well, arguing with Steve wasn't going to get me anywhere, so I headed into the kitchen and started going through cupboards, wondering what was the best thing to make for dinner for a mythical assassin who could kill me with his pinky.

Steve followed me in and started pulling open drawers. Probably looking for scissors. Barnes kept his eyes fixed right on him.

"What's for supper, anyway?"

"Supper," I muttered. "You know, nobody's called it 'supper' in seventy years, right? It's called dinner these days."

Steve laughed. "All right then, what's for dinner?"

"Something that doesn't need to be eaten with a knife. How're you doing, anyway?" I asked and Steve looked like I'd asked the world's weirdest question.

"Me? I'm fine."

He found scissors and turned back to the dining room before I could ask him to prove that. Barnes looked down just as soon as Steve turned. Like he wanted to stare some message into Steve, but only when Steve wasn't looking.

I kept looking through the cupboards for something to make that couldn't be used as an excuse for disemboweling me and finally decided to make my Mom's beef & macaroni recipe. The stove was set right where I could keep an eye on what was happening in the dining room while I got started on that.

Not much was happening.

Steve was bandaging Barnes' right hand. Maybe bandaging his real hand would make it harder for him to kill us. Maybe, but I doubted it. But that's all that was going on. Steve's head was down, paying attention to his task and Barnes was staring at him. When Steve looked up, Barnes looked away. When Barnes looked back, Steve looked down.

I didn't get it. I had no love for Barnes but Steve did and he was acting like it was every single day that his best friend came back from the dead. _Again_. If it was Riley sitting in that chair -

Riley.

God, Riley.

Even thinking that Riley might suddenly appear next to me hit me so hard I had to go to the other side of the kitchen so Steve wouldn't see me trying to not break down.

There wasn't a day I didn't think about Riley. There was hardly a night I didn't dream of him falling to his death.

If he reappeared in my life, even after seventy years, even if he'd forgotten me and tried to kill me, if Riley somehow some way came back into my life, there wasn't anything I wouldn't do to find him, help him, protect him. Take care of him. And God help anybody who got in my way.

I wouldn't treat him like an unexploded land mine.

The water was boiling on the stove so I got back to making dinner, mac and cheese and beef with a bag of frozen corn thrown in just because Barnes didn't look like he'd eaten anywhere near enough any time recently.

I was just dishing my masterpiece up into a bowl when Steve came into the kitchen. He looked at me a second and asked, "You okay?" and I tried not to lie when I answered,

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine.

He didn't look like he believed me but he didn't push it.

"Is supper ready? Thanks for making that, by the way. I'm going to get some clothes for Buck. I'll be right back."

And he disappeared into the back of the house and I was left in the middle of the house with Barnes still at the dining room table staring at his metal hand like he'd either never seen it before or was trying to think of ways to weaponize it. You know, more than it already was.

Was he an IED waiting to explode?

Maybe he was just a guy with the worst PTSD in history.

If he was any other soldier, I'd be doing my best to help him.

If he was Riley…

I stuck a spoon into a bowl, grabbed some napkins, and carried it all into the dining room. Barnes watched me with no expression.

"Here," I told him, holding the bowl out to him. He didn't take it and he didn't take his eyes off of me.

Maybe he was planning my extinction.

Maybe he was exhausted.

"It's - uh - supper. You look like you could use it."

That got him to look from me to the bowl and back at me, but he still didn't take it.

Maybe he wasn't used to people taking care of him.

"I'll leave it here for you," I said. I set the bowl and napkins on the table next to him and turned back to the kitchen. "Whenever you want it."

Back at the stove, I gave a look to Barnes. He had the bowl in his left hand and he was taking a spoonful of food into his mouth. He chewed it at first like he was checking for booby traps and then - then his face changed, slow, from a drawn, pinched, ' _he's trying to poison me'_ expression to a relaxed and open and surprised _'he's_ _ **not**_ _trying to poison me'_ expression.

I guess he wasn't used to people being nice to him.

He actually looked over at me - I don't think he was expecting me to be looking at him - but he looked over at me and for a second or longer, I could see Riley there, bent and bruised but holding his own, and when Barnes met my eyes, I smiled.

If I smiled at him or if I smiled at Riley, I don't know. But I smiled and Barnes ducked his head fast like he was caught off guard and kept eating like somebody might come along and take it from him.

In another few minutes, Steve came back with an armful of clothes.

"All right, Buck. You ready to have a shower? Bathroom's back this way. Here, I'll take that."

He brought Barnes' empty bowl to the kitchen and put it in the sink. Barnes brought himself into the kitchen and I'd never realized just how small that kitchen was until he was standing right in front of me, with wild hair and hard eyes, in full battle armor and weaponized arm.

Standing that close, even his whiskers seemed lethal.

I gave a fast look to Steve who looked concerned which did nothing for my sense of personal safety.

"Hey, man," I tried with Barnes.

"It was good," he said. "Supper. It was good."

Totally not what I was expecting.

"Oh. Good. Thanks," I answered, trying hard to not show how relieved I was not to be getting disemboweled. "Plenty more whenever you want it."

He nodded once and followed Steve who threw a grin at me before he headed down the hall to the bathroom with Barnes following.

Somewhere, I thought Riley was probably grinning at me too.

##


	3. Chapter 3

Three words.

Three little words.

How hard can it be for one guy to tell another guy - his friend, his pal, his brother in arms - three little words?

Not hard at all.

" _Told you so_ ," I gloated those three words to Steve as he re-bandaged Barnes's hand at the dining room table. "Those bandages didn't last through the shower, did they?"

"Shut up," Steve shot back, embarrassed not angry. I love being right.

After his shower, Barnes had followed Steve back to the table, taken his seat and when Steve asked, silently offered his hand for re-bandaging. He was wearing a set of Steve's clothes. His hair was wet and pushed off his face; the blood and dirt had been washed away and that made his black eye, split lip, torn cheek, and other assorted cuts, bruises and scratches look just that much worse.

"Need painkillers?" I asked Steve. Normal painkillers didn't really work for Steve, but the docs had figured a dosage that would take the edge off when he needed it. They'd probably work for Barnes.

"I'll get them when I'm done here," Steve said. He looked up and Barnes looked away and I wondered how long that dance was going to last. "I may have to butterfly some of those facial lacerations."

"Well, I'll leave you to it. I'm gonna get the rest of supper going."

"You don't have to keep calling it that, you know."

I shrugged, "It's growing on me. Who knows, I might even start saving aluminum." I laughed at his scowl and headed for the kitchen with a final shot, "Call me if you can't find the scissors again."

"Ha. Ha."

It didn't take long to round out the beef and mac and cheese to a full dinner for the three of us; peas and carrots, my Mom's parmesan toast, canned peaches. As I was putting the coffee on, I heard Steve talking to Barnes, "This might hurt. I'll try to be careful."

"You don't have to."

"I don't want the cuts to get infected."

"They'll heal."

"And they'll heal better with bandages on them."

I guess Barnes gave because I didn't hear anymore argument and in a few minutes Steve was carrying the first aid kit back to the bathroom. Barnes was still at the table, holding his right wrist in his left hand and sporting three butterfly bandages that were pulling closed the gash on his left cheek. He seemed to be focused on the map on the table but his eyes were half-closed. I wondered how long it'd been since he got a decent night's sleep.

Dinner was ready and instead of making Barnes come to the kitchen, I brought a plateful in for him. When I set it in front of him he looked up at me like why the hell was I getting into his space, but then he saw the food and his eyes got a little wide and he nodded and even gave me a soft, "thanks".

And then I pulled the map off the table.

"I need that," he said and reached for it with his bandaged hand. I wondered if he was going to fight me for it, but Steve came in with two tablets and a glass of water.

"Here you go, these'll help with the pain." He set them down in front of Barnes. "And don't even think of telling me that you don't need them, because we both know you do."

"I need the map," Barnes said and Steve looked at me.

"Give him the map," he said, just like that, just like if Barnes needed it or even just wanted it, he was damn well going to have it.

"I'm just moving it out of the way while we eat. If we're taking down HYDRA, I don't want to get into trouble because we confused a ketchup stain for a nuclear warhead or something."

Barnes looked confused, I wondered if maybe he didn't know what ketchup was because I was sure he not only knew what nuclear warheads were, I assumed he was on a first name basis with more than a few of them. He looked at the map, he looked at the plate of food, he looked at the map - then he pushed the plate away and reached for the map again.

He was clean and fed and in a safe house with his best friend who was ready to do anything to anyone to protect him, but he was here on a mission and, as hungry as he probably still was, he was going to choose the mission over eating. He'd been out of the reach of Hydra for two years, but he wasn't free of them. Not yet.

I folded the map and handed it to Steve. " _After_ we eat," I told him. I figured he could convince Barnes faster and better than I could.

Steve took the map and looked at it like he had to actually think about it.

"Yeah, after we eat," he finally said to Barnes. "We eat first."

For that, Barnes looked at him head on, breathing through his nose like he was _this close_ to meltdown, and Steve looked back at him and neither of them looked away which might've been progress if they weren't two on-edge super-soldiers who could reduce the house to matchsticks if they were even a little pissed off.

"Okay, Buck? We'll go over everything again after we eat. Please?"

Finally, Barnes inclined his head. He didn't nod, he didn't tip his head, he _inclined_ it, which had to be a yes, because Steve tucked the map under his arm, "Good, thank you." Barnes pulled his plate close again and Steve and I headed to the kitchen to get our own dinners. "I mean it, take the painkillers," Steve reminded Barnes

Both of the pills and all of the water was gone when we came back with our plates but Barnes hadn't started eating yet. He looked at Steve with an expression like he all of a sudden couldn't figure something out, but Steve was avoiding looking at Barnes, _again,_ so I guess he didn't see it.

Neither of us had broached the question if we thought Barnes was actually Barnes again or the Winter Soldier still or some amalgam of the two. Given what I knew about what'd happened to him all those seventy years, the body-freezing and the brain-frying, brain damage was not only possible, it was probable.

Just as I was going to get his attention, Steve bent his head for grace. We always said grace, it was something both of our mothers instilled in us. I didn't want to be obvious that I thought something was wrong with Barnes, so I decided I'd wait until after grace to kick Steve under the table. He took a deep breath.

 _"For what we have received, we are truly grateful."_

Barnes closed his eyes and let out a breath like he'd been waiting for just that to happen, then he started eating.

To be continued


	4. Chapter 4

Barnes fell asleep at the dining room table.

I didn't know how I felt about that.

He finished his dinner in no time flat then pushed the plate away and opened the map in front of himself again. He studied it while Steve and I finished our food a little more slowly. Meaning at a normal pace. Me because my Mama raised me with manners, and Steve because he spent most of his time staring at Barnes staring at that map.

I couldn't figure what Barnes might still be looking for that he hadn't already seen, but I wasn't going to be the one to ask him. He moved his finger along the map, like he was tracing a river or a road, then he stopped where he'd pointed the fortress out to us before. Maybe that was how he memorized directions or something. Going over them again and again.

Like I said, I wasn't going to ask.

I was done with my dinner and was getting ready to collect dishes and I looked at Barnes. His finger was on the map. His head was bowed – I thought in concentration. But his eyes were closed. His eyes were closed and his breathing was low, slow, and steady.

He was asleep.

Steve was giving a look like it was the sweetest thing he'd ever seen, and I was wondering if I'd have to sit there until Barnes woke up to not risk dying by startling him. I cleared my throat as quiet as I could and when Steve looked at me, I gave a nod to the dishes, hoping he'd get the idea.

He nodded, he got it. He put his hand on Barnes' metal arm, "Buck?", and gave it a gentle shake.

Like I'd been afraid, Barnes woke up primed to survive. He was on his feet in a blink, chair shoved over, hands clenched, metal arm alive and humming, face impassive and eyes –

Terrified.

His eyes were wide and shot back and forth between me and Steve, like he was waiting for one of us to go medieval on him.

Barnes was _terrified_.

"So, Buck," Steve said as calm as anything, standing up slow with his hand still on Barnes' arm. "What do you say? Got room for dessert or do you want me to show you where you'll be sleeping?"

It took a minute, an actual full minute, of Barnes staring at Steve, little breaths punching out of him like he couldn't figure what the hell Rogers was talking about. "Dessert?"

I thought Steve would get the idea that Barnes was questioning the word, not answering the question, but he only said, "Dessert it is. Sam makes a great lemon cream pie."

"Sam?" Barnes asked because, yeah, I don't think we were ever really introduced.

"Sam," Steve said and nodded at me. Me, still sitting in my chair, afraid that even breathing too deep would upset the knife-edge balance we had going on here. Then Barnes looked at me and the fear I saw in his eyes was the kind I'd seen a hundred times, a thousand times, in vets who were only physically back from war. It was the fear that usually had me clearing rooms, closing doors and pulling blinds to give them privacy, trying to make them feel safe. Yeah, it was the kind of look that had me afraid for my own safety a lot of times. But it was never a look that kept me from trying to help.

So I told him, "I'm gonna stand up now. All right?" I lifted my hands so he could see they were empty. "Just standing up."

He watched me stand up, his breathing still sharp and his arm braced for battle. His arm that Steve thankfully still had a hold of. "You're Sam. You made supper," he said. He sounded like he was cataloguing the information.

"I did."

He nodded and looked at the map and at the dishes and then at Steve. "What?"

I thought the question was a little out of the blue, but Steve didn't miss a beat. "Dessert?"

"Uhhh – lemon? Pie? Cream of lemon pie?"

Well, that made it sound like a soup. It also made it sound like he thought Steve had been asking what dessert was going to be. Steve still didn't miss a beat.

"Sounds pretty good, don't you think? What d'you say we try some?"

Barnes stared at Steve, and at his arm where Steve was still holding on. It seemed like he tried to take a deep breath but it also seemed like it didn't work. He shook his head, rough and jerky. "This is wrong. No, this is wrong. I shouldn't be here."

"Bucky – " Steve started, but I cut him off with a look. He might have had a lot of experience with evil monsters and bad guys, but I had experience with shattered, vulnerable soldiers. My training, my compassion, kicked in.

"Hey, man, can you look at me?" I waited a few seconds, five or six seconds, but Barnes didn't look at me. I didn't know how he'd take this next part, but I had to try. " _Bucky_? Can you look at me?"

Slowly, he turned his head to look at me. He didn't react to my using his nickname.

"This is a safe place," I told him. "You're safe here. You belong here. You're all right."

He swallowed, and swallowed again, staring at me like I was still talking and he didn't want to miss anything. He was still breathing like he'd run a marathon.

"You're safe here, you belong here," I told him again. He stared at me another few seconds then he sagged, like all the air had suddenly been popped out of him. Steve pulled his chair upright and guided him back down into it.

"You okay, Buck?" Steve asked.

"No – it's – yeah. Yeah. I'm fine."

Yeah, with his hand shaking and the sweat standing out on his forehead, that was so totally a lie, but neither of us called him on it.

"Well, I'm going to get us dessert," I said. I picked up my dishes and took another chance with Barnes. "Could you hand me your plates?"

Steve looked at me like I'd asked Barnes to run out and pick up my laundry but I gave him a 'trust me, I know what I'm doing' look. Sure enough, Barnes bundled his plate with Steve's and handed them over.

"Thanks, man," I said and for a few seconds he looked nothing but normal, pleased with what he'd accomplished and grateful at being thanked for it.

"If I can help…" he offered, hesitating saying it like he wasn't sure how I was going to react. And I realized _again_ how underneath it all, in spite of it all, because of it all, Barnes was just a man trying to overcome decades of torture and brainwashing and guilt the size of the known universe.

He was a man who just wanted to feel human again.

"Sure - you think you can make a pot of coffee Rogers won't complain about? Because – please – I need someone else to give it a try."

And, of course, Steve shot me another 'you're making him do work for you?' face, but it lasted only until Barnes stood up, saying, "Yeah," like he was looking forward to the challenge and I stopped myself just this short of giving Steve my victory look.

"Great, c'mon, I'll show you where everything is."

tbc


End file.
